Another Voice: When collegiate ‘free speech’ issues make the news

Adlai Stevenson once said, “A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.” That description hasn’t much applied to today’s college campuses.

But there’s some good news: Some people on college campuses are actually behaving sensibly, and in keeping with the principles of a free society. It’s sad that such behavior counts as news nowadays, but it does.

Let’s start with University of Maryland President Wallace Loh, who responded to circulation of an “offensive” email: “(University’s investigators) concluded that this private email, while hateful and reprehensible, did not violate university policies and is protected by the First Amendment. … However, this determination does not mitigate the fact that the email is profoundly hurtful to the entire university community. … When any one of us is harmed by the hateful speech of another, all of us are harmed.”

Loh deserves a lot of credit. He didn’t try to punish anyone for engaging in “badthink,” or try to trump up threatening ideas into some bogus physical threat, as some schools have done. Instead, he reaffirmed that people have free speech rights, and that includes the right to express unwelcome opinions.

Likewise, at Buffalo State College in New York, free speech prevailed. After the student government froze funding for the student newspaper because some people took offense at its April Fools’ issue, the administration stepped in to remind students that free speech is free speech.

Buffalo State’s Vice President Hal Payne wrote: “While the The Record’s April Fools’ satire edition may have been upsetting to some and certainly pressed the boundaries of humor, I am concerned that the United Students Government’s decision to freeze the paper’s funding may infringe on students’ right to free speech.”

Meanwhile, at Brown University, where a speech on sexual assault by Wendy McElroy was deemed too threatening for the tender ears of Brown students so that a “safe space” was provided, student Walker Mills wrote a column in The Brown Daily Herald on the absurdity of Ivy League students demanding protection from disagreeable opinions.

Mills wrote: “As students, we don’t have a right to be comfortable. … The university should take a position where it supports students but pushes them to their absolute limits, challenges their beliefs and makes them uncomfortable. If Brown lets us go four years without forcing us to reevaluate our core beliefs, it has failed us.”

Well, yes. That is what college is supposed to be about. It’s a pity that so many seem to need reminding of that, and it’s a shame that it’s newsworthy when people remember. But at least there’s some good news to report. More, please.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author of “The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.”